The Ninth Nightmare

EIGHT Helpless

Lincoln became aware that somebody was saying his name, over and over — not as if they were trying to wake him, but as if they enjoyed repeating it simply for the way it sounded.

It was a young woman’s voice, soft and modulated. At first he thought she sounded like Grace, his wife, but then he realized that she had a slight accent. She reminded him of a pretty Creole girl who used to work on the reception desk at K-C Records in New Orleans.

He opened his eyes. At first, everything was foggy. He was lying in an unfamiliar room, lit by bright fluorescent strip-lights. Above him there was a polystyrene-tiled ceiling and when he lifted his head a little he saw that three sides of his bed were surrounded by a pale yellow curtain with an interlocking pattern of seabirds on it.

‘Lincoln!’ cooed the young woman’s voice. ‘Lincoln, you’re back with us! I’m so glad!’

He tried to sit up, but for some reason he found that he couldn’t. He felt no pain, but his muscles wouldn’t work. He lifted his head a little more and he could see his feet at the end of the bed, in white surgical socks, but he couldn’t waggle them. This was more than numbness. He felt as if he were completely absent from the chest down, leaving only his head and his arms.

The girl stood up and leaned over him and to his bewilderment it was the Creole girl from K-C records. She was dusky-skinned, with high cheekbones and feline eyes, and her mass of black dreadlocks made her look like Medusa, who could turn men to solid stone. She was wearing a clinging dress in purple jersey with a large amethyst pendant dangling between her breasts and at least a dozen silver bracelets on each wrist.

Lincoln could smell her and she smelled like jasmine flowers on a warm summer evening, in some enclosed courtyard in the French Quarter.

‘Can’t remember your name,’ Lincoln whispered. He gave a dry, abrasive cough, and then he said, ‘What was it? I know… always reminded me of “ukulele”.’

‘Eulalie,’ the girl smiled. ‘Eulalie Passebon.’

‘That’s it, Eulalie. What the hell are you doing here, Eulalie? And come to that, where the hell is here?’

‘You’re in the emergency room at the Case Medical Center, in Cleveland.’

‘What?’

‘You’ve had a very serious accident, Lincoln.’

Again, Lincoln tried to sit up. He could move his arms, and press down against the mattress with his hands, but he could only raise his head a few inches.

‘I can’t move! What happened to me? I don’t remember.’

‘They found you lying on the patio outside of your room at the Griffin House Hotel. You fell, and broke your spine. You’re paralysed — temporarily, at least.’

Lincoln stared at her. ‘Paralysed?’

Eulalie took hold of his right hand and lifted it to her lips and kissed it. ‘I’m so sorry, Lincoln. This was the very last thing I wanted to happen.’

‘Where’s a doctor? I need to see a doctor! What are you doing here? Has anybody called my wife?’

‘Shh,’ said Eulalie. ‘I’ll call for the doctor in just a minute, I promise you. The hospital staff have contacted Grace to tell her what happened to you. She’s flying in from Detroit and she should be here in less than an hour. But first of all it’s very important that you understand what’s happened to you. You need to understand who you are.’

Lincoln began to panic. ‘I don’t know what in hell you’re talking about! I need to see a doctor!’

‘Lincoln—’

‘I’m paralysed, for Christ’s sake! I don’t know how it happened and I’m lying here in this goddamned hospital bed and you’re a goddamned receptionist for a record company in New Orleans. What’s going on? Have I gone crazy, or what?’

‘Lincoln, listen to me. We don’t have much time. Do you remember the man with the gray face and the green lipstick and the long gray hair?’

Lincoln blinked at her. ‘What? I still don’t know what you’re talking about!’

‘It was back at the Griffin House Hotel, room one-oh-four. A woman was lying on your bed. She was badly hurt, wasn’t she? Then the bed caught fire and you tried to hide in the bathroom but the man with the gray face and the green lipstick was there, hiding in the shower stall.’

Lincoln said nothing, but continued to stare at her wide eyed. As he did so, a flickering image began to move inside his mind, as if he were remembering a grainy old movie that he had seen a long time ago, in some unfamiliar movie theater.

The gray-faced man stepped out of the shower stall, all spindly and dressed in black, and his lips were painted with green make-up into a mad, pointed grin, even though his real lips were tightly puckered with anger. His voice when he spoke sounded as if he had a mouthful of dry sand.

‘I warned you not to come, now didn’t I? You would not listen to me, though, would you? You out-and-out refused to listen.’

Eulalie said, ‘He came after you with his handsaw, didn’t he? And the room was burning and the door was locked and there was only one way out.’

‘The fire escape,’ Lincoln whispered. Now he remembered.

‘That’s right. And it collapsed, and you fell three stories to the ground. And that’s how you broke your back.’

Eulalie kissed his hand again, and then she said, ‘The hotel staff who found you on the patio, they did the right thing and didn’t try to move you. So the chances of your recovering look pretty good.’

‘That man who came after me, who was he?’

‘We don’t know for sure. But we think he could have been a murderer called Gordon Veitch.’

‘Who?’

‘Gordon Veitch. He raped and killed at least a dozen women in the nineteen-thirties. Maybe it wasn’t the real Gordon Veitch, because Gordon Veitch is probably dead by now, but a nightmare of Gordon Veitch.’

‘A nightmare? That doesn’t make any sense at all. You’re tryin’ to tell me that he was only a dream?’

‘Maybe he was, maybe wasn’t. Another possibility is that he was somebody who was made up to look like Gordon Veitch. A copycat.’

Lincoln said, ‘What happened in that hotel room, believe me, that felt real. I don’t know how it could have been, but I’m lyin’ here right now with my back broke, and nothin’ comes much realer than that, does it?’

‘Whoever that man was, Lincoln, and whether he was real or not, we need your help to track him down and put a stop to what he’s doing.’

‘You’re kiddin’ me, right? Look at me, I can’t even get out of bed.’

Eulalie leaned forward so that her face was very close to his, almost as if she were going to kiss him on the lips. He could even see his own face reflected in her eyes. ‘I’m not Eulalie, Lincoln, even though I look like her. The reason I took on Eulalie’s appearance was because you know her and like her, and I needed to gain your trust as quickly as possible.’

‘You’re not Eulalie? Then who the hell are you?’

‘My name is Springer. I’m kind of a messenger, an envoy.’

‘Who for? DHL?’

Springer shook her dreadlocks. ‘I come from Ashapola, who is the spirit of faultless light and absolute purity.’

There was a very long pause. Lincoln didn’t know if he ought to snort or laugh or burst into tears. ‘You’re talkin’ about, like, God?’

‘Ashapola is known to many different people by many different names. But Ashapola is our guardian and our protector. Ashapola is all that stands between the human race and ultimate chaos.’

‘You’re not some hospital visitor, are you? Where you from, the Baptists or somethin’? You tryin’ to convert me?’

Springer smiled. ‘I don’t need to convert you, Lincoln. You are what you are. You’re descended from a long line of people who have the capability of entering the world of dreams and nightmares and fighting on the side of good. We call them Night Warriors. If you like, you’re one of Ashapola’s army.’

‘Say what? I wasn’t descended from no Night Warriors. My father was a jazz musician and my grandfather was a cook at The Whitney and my great-grandfather before him worked as a sweeper-upper in the Polish match factory.’

‘I know. But apart from being a cook, your grandfather Joseph was Zebenjo the Arrow-Storm. He was a Night Warrior who was capable of firing over two hundred arrows so fast that you couldn’t see them coming.’

‘Oh, right.’

Springer squeezed his left knee through the blankets.

‘Feel anything? Anything at all?’

Lincoln shook his head.

‘That’s because of your spinal injury. But that won’t affect your ability to become Zebenjo’Yyx, the grandson of the great Zebenjo, and fire arrows at the same devastating rate as Zebenjo did.’

‘Of course I will. Forget about the fact that I can’t sit up and I’ve never thrown anythin’ in my life more lethal than a frisbee. Lady — whoever you are — all of this sounds totally insane. It’s obvious that I’ve been hurt real bad. Maybe it happened for real or maybe I was havin’ some kind of trip. Maybe I was havin’ a nightmare. Maybe I’m still havin’ a nightmare, right now, and I’m beginnin’ to think that maybe I am. But, come on, what’s this arrow-shootin’ shit?’

Springer stayed where she was, leaning over him, so that he could feel her steady breathing on his cheek. In spite of himself, his testiness began to subside. There was something so attractive about her that he wished he had the strength to raise up his head just two or three inches more, and kiss her. Yet the attraction wasn’t so much sexual as spiritual. He suddenly felt that here was a woman who really understood him, all of his ambitions, all of his frustrations, all of his impatience, right down to the very core of his soul. She gave him a feeling of deep relief, as if he had been waiting for this moment of revelation all of his life. As if she had said to him, this is you, Lincoln. This is who you really are. No need for posturing. No need for swagger. This is you.

Springer reached across and picked up a hand mirror from the nightstand. She held it up so that Lincoln could see his own face in it.

‘You can’t stand up yet, so I can’t show you the way you’re going to look when you’re a Night Warrior. Not your whole armor, anyhow, head-to-toe, and all of your weapons. But this will be the face that you wear, when you enter other people’s dreams. This is the face that the enemies of Ashapola will see, and learn to fear.’

Lincoln looked up into the mirror, but all he could see was his usual face, with a crimson bruise over his left eyebrow, and a split in his upper lip.

‘So?’ he asked Springer. ‘What am I supposed to be lookin’ at?’

‘Zebenjo’Yyx, grandson of the great Zebenjo, the Arrow-Storm.’

‘Oh, of course. I can distinctly see the resemblance.’

‘Wait,’ Springer chided him. ‘Have patience.’

‘I need to see a doctor, lady. I need to see a doctor right now.’

‘You’re not hurting, are you?’

‘No. I’m not hurtin’ at all. I almost wish that I was. At least that would mean I could feel somethin’.’

He looked up into the hand mirror again, and when he did so, he said, ‘Shit!’ The face looking back at him was no longer his, but a tan leather mask, intricately decorated with scar patterns and diagonal lines of white paint. It was topped with braided knots of dry red hair, and its mouth was fixed in a ferocious scowl, with what looked like a mixed-up collection of human and animal teeth crammed into it.

He could see his eyes staring out of the mask, and he knew they were his, because they blinked whenever he blinked. But the mask itself was terrifying, like a ju-ju mask. His grandfather Joseph used to have one hanging on his front door, with bulging eyes and a red protruding tongue. He had told Lincoln that he had nailed it up there to scare away any bad spirits, but it had scared Lincoln, too, when he was little, and he had always run past it with his hands covering his eyes.

‘This is a trick, right?’ Lincoln asked Springer. ‘Some kind of optical illusion?’

‘No trick,’ Springer assured him. ‘This is the battle mask that Zebenjo’Yyx wears, whenever he goes to war. And you should see his amazing armor, and the weapons he carries. In fact you will.’

She reached down and picked up a small alligator-skin purse. She opened it up and took out a folded sheet of paper. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘This is the invocation that Night Warriors always have to say before they go to sleep at night. Once you have spoken these words, the spirit of Ashapola will visit you in your dreams and invest you with all of the equipment and protection that you require.’

‘Lady—’ said Lincoln. ‘Do you really expect me to believe any of this?’

‘Do you believe what happened to you at the Griffin House Hotel?’

‘I believe I saw it, for sure. But I don’t necessarily believe that it really happened for real. You can go to the desert, can’t you, and see lakes, but there’s no lakes there at all, only sand. You wouldn’t get your feet wet.’

‘So how did you fall out of a ground-level window and break your spine?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe I just fell awkward. I don’t even want to think about it.’

‘But you have to think about it, Lincoln, because we need you, desperately, and we need you now.’

Lincoln turned his head away and stared at the yellow seabirds on the curtains. ‘I’m goin’ crazy,’ he said. ‘I’ve lost it. I’ve gone nuts. Admit it — tell me that this is a nuthouse.’

‘You’re not crazy, Lincoln, and tonight you’ll find that out for yourself. But you have to promise me that you’ll repeat the invocation. Look — I’m tucking it under the pillow, right here.’

‘What does it say?’

Springer unfolded it. ‘“Now, when the face of the world is hidden in darkness, let us be conveyed to the place of our meeting, armed and armored; and let us be nourished by the power that is dedicated to the cleaving of darkness, the settling of all black matters, and the dissipation of all evil. So be it.”’

‘Read it again,’ Lincoln asked her.

Springer read the words again. After she had finished, Lincoln said, ‘These Night Warriors — what exactly are they?’

‘They were created by Ashapola to protect us in our dreams. Their original Sanskrit name means “Army of Dreams”, although the Greeks and the Romans called them “The Legions of Sleep”.’

‘Go on.’

‘Ashapola created the first human so that she could dream how the world of humans was eventually going to turn out, and he could copy her dreams and make them come alive. Some of her dreams were beautiful beyond any description, but others were violent and chaotic. So the second human that Ashapola created was capable of becoming a Night Warrior, to make sure that the first human came to no harm when she was asleep. And that was how the Night Warriors’ bloodline began.’

‘Come on… you’re tellin’ me that Adam wasn’t Adam at all, but some woman?’

‘Eve, that’s right. Why do you think she was called “Eve”? In Hebrew, her name means “life” or “breathing”. But she was created to imagine the world in her sleep, every night when evening fell.’

‘A woman. I can’t believe it. No wonder the world is in such a goddamned mess.’

At that moment, the curtain around the bed was sharply drawn back, and a doctor and a nurse appeared. The doctor was Indian, with a long face and huge black-rimmed spectacles and a tiny black moustache, while the nurse was plump and red-haired and kept smiling and raising her eyebrows as if she had just been told a hilarious off-color joke and was bursting to share it with them.

‘I am very sorry to be interrupting your visit,’ the doctor told Springer. ‘Please — if you can come back in maybe ten minutes?’

‘I have to go now anyhow,’ said Springer. She leaned over again and kissed Lincoln on the cheek. ‘Tonight,’ she said. ‘You won’t forget, will you? We really need you. The others will be waiting for you. So will I.’

‘Others?’

‘At least six more, maybe seven.’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think I can handle any more nightmares.’

Springer kissed him again. ‘Please,’ she breathed. ‘Just be there. Please.’

When she had left the room, the doctor came up to Lincoln’s bedside and leafed through his notes.

‘I am Doctor Dhawan and this is Nurse Fairbrother. How do you do, Mr Walker? It was I who first treated you when you were admitted.’

‘Hi,’ said Lincoln.

‘Did I hear you say to your friend that you had been suffering from nightmares?’

‘Right now, everythin’s a nightmare. Am I going to stay paralysed like this for the rest of my life?’

‘Of course that is the very first thing you will be wanting to know, sir. What has happened is that you have fallen with considerable impact, fracturing your T10 thoracic vertebra in the middle of your back. I will be able to show you your injury very clearly on your MRI and CT scans.’

Lincoln waited while Doctor Dhawan frowned at his notes again and tugged at his moustache. Eventually, he said, ‘What has happened is that a broken fragment of bone is pressing on your spinal cord. You must remember that the spinal cord is very soft, with a consistency like toothpaste, and so it is very susceptible to pressure of this nature.

‘At the moment, although you may not be able to feel it, your back is held immobile by a brace. I have also put you on steroids to prevent as much swelling of the spinal column as possible. I will be doing more tests in the coming days, but from what I have seen of your injury so far, I should be able to perform a surgical operation which we call “decompression” and this will be removing the offending fragment of bone.’

‘Then I’ll be able to sit up, and walk?’

‘Eventually, sir, we are very much hoping so. It will take some time, and much therapy. But I believe the prognosis is good.’

Relieved, Lincoln lowered his head back on to his pillow. Nurse Fairbrother wheeled up a blood pressure monitor, picked up his right arm and wrapped the sleeve around it.

‘You’re that record promoter, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘The Jive Machine? Skootah and the Gang? I really love that music.’

Lincoln gave her half a smile. He was preoccupied by what Doctor Dhawan had told him about his chances of recovery; but also by the feeling that Springer had given him that his life was on the verge of changing for ever.

‘Millie D, too,’ Nurse Fairbrother was saying, as she checked his heart rate. ‘“I’m going to dream about you, lover, even when I’m wide awake.” I really love that song.’

‘Yeah, cool,’ said Lincoln. ‘Next time Millie D’s in town, I’ll make sure you get some front-row tickets.’

‘You know what you are?’ said Nurse Fairbrother. ‘You’re an angel.’

An angel? thought Lincoln. Not just yet, thanks, if it’s all the same to you.

Twenty minutes after Nurse Fairbrother had set him up with a new steroid drip and left him alone, he began to feel sleepy. Grace hadn’t arrived at the hospital yet. According to the local news, severe electric storms over Lake Erie had delayed flights into Hopkins International by up to an hour. He watched Everybody Hates Chris for a while but his eyes kept closing.

He was right on the edge of dropping off when his left hand slid under the pillow and he found the piece of paper that Springer had given him. He took it out and unfolded it. He didn’t really know why, but he began to read the handwritten words on it out loud.

‘“Now, when the face of the world is hidden in darkness, let us be conveyed to the place of our meeting, armed and armored; and let us be nourished by the power that is dedicated to the cleaving of darkness, the settling of all black matters, and the dissipation of all evil. So be it.”’

He folded it up again and pushed it back under his pillow. Night Warriors, he thought. That Eulalie must have been playing some kind of sick joke on him. She had probably been visiting Cleveland on business or seeing some relatives or some such, and heard that he was here in the hospital. He was a celebrity, after all, and they had probably run a bulletin about it on WBNX. But Night Warriors, for Christ’s sake. She and her friends were probably wetting themselves with laughter right this minute. The coolest record producer in the country, cooler than Puff Daddy even, and he falls out of a first-story hotel window and winds up with a broken back. Never mind, I fooled him into thinking that he was going to be some kind of superhero. And who was he supposed to be? The Arrow-Storm? You got to believe it.

Lincoln closed his eyes. He wasn’t asleep yet, but his mind was crowded with jerky, nightmarish pictures. He kept seeing the gray-faced man with the grinning green lips, stepping out of the shower stall with his handsaw. Then he saw the Hispanic woman with the wavy black hair, pleading with him not to leave her. El prestidigitator, she whispered. You don’t know what he’s done to me. Then he saw her bed exploding into flames.

This time, however, she didn’t lie there motionless, as she had before, like a dead woman on a funeral pyre. This time she sat bolt upright and stared at him, and her hair was a crown of orange fire. This time she stretched her mouth wide open and let out an ululating howl of agony that went on and on.

‘Stop!’ Lincoln begged her. ‘I can’t save you! I can’t even move! Please stop screamin’!’

But the woman continued to scream even though flames were licking out of her blankets and her nightdress was curling up into blackened rags.

‘Stop!’ Lincoln shouted at her. ‘For Christ’s sake, stop!’

Her screaming became fainter and fainter, until all that Lincoln could hear was the crackling of the flames. Gradually the woman herself began to fade, like a sepia photograph that has been exposed to the sun for too many years. He thought he could smell smoke, but then that faded too. He lay with his hand on his chest, panting.

‘What’s happenin’ to you, bro?’ he whispered. ‘You losin’ your sanity, or what?’ He thought of his batty old grandmother, always hooking her hand around between her shoulder blades and complaining that cats were jumping on her back. He thought of Old Mister Jeffreys who used to sit on a sack of dog food in the corner of the Clay Market on Clay Street, shouting about the Polacks, and how the Polacks were the enemies of the black folks. ‘Never used to be so much goddamned sausage around, not till the Polacks took over!’

Exhausted, bruised, his mind fogged by pain suppressants, Lincoln fell asleep.